Real racing returns

Reviewed on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360

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June 24, 2014

Grid Autosport is the closest Codemasters has come to recapturing the mojo of the original Pro Race Driver games since my PlayStation 2 was still plugged in. In stark contrast to the street racing-focused Grid 2, the pendulum has swung back towards actual motorsport; purpose-built race cars once again make up a sizeable slab of Autosport’s vehicle roster, and Codemasters has stuffed it with more than twice as many genuine racing circuits as Grid 2 has. Autosport makes some odd missteps with its low-quality cabin view and its flawed endurance racing, and it lacks the customisation options that would’ve empowered us to re-craft cars from the real-world racing series this game mimics, but overall Autosport is Codemasters finally firing on all cylinders again.

Importantly, Autosport redresses concerns with Grid 2’s handling model: that it was a one-size-fits-all model honed for easy powerslides. Autosport more closely matches the handling in the original Grid; it still straddles the line between simulation and arcade, but it does ask us to take things a little more seriously than Grid 2 ever did. Even with the driving aids off I found Autosport fairly forgiving, but measured acceleration, steady steering, and careful braking are still key if you want a spot on the podium.

The thin attempt at plot from Grid 2 is gone in Autosport; all that matters here is the racing.

The multi-disciplined approach that has defined the Grid series (and the Race Driver series before it) returns here. In Autosport, progression is divided across five categories you can play through as you desire: Touring, Endurance, Open Wheel, Tuner, and Street. You need to play them all eventually if you want to meet the minimum requirements to unlock the special Grid Grand Slam events (which string together a series of races from across all five types of racing), but outside of that how you progress through the races on offer is determined entirely by you.

As a touring car fan, I found myself exclusively racing tin-tops for many hours upon first booting up. It was at least two or three sessions before I even competed in my first Street race. Autosport doesn’t care that I’d unlocked all of its touring car events before I’d even started scratching the surface of its Street events, nor will it care if you do the exact opposite.

The better you perform in each category the more offers you’ll receive from rival teams. Less bold teams have easily achievable success targets but modest XP rewards, and you’ll usually find you’re not able to tune your car a great deal, if at all. Autosport’s prestige team, Ravenwest, demands top results but shells out plenty of XP and allows you to adjust a variety of tuning options at your own discretion.

Meanwhile in Australia...

The Touring category is where Autosport most resembles the typical Codemasters circuit racers of old. Autosport lacks the real-world championships of its Race Driver ancestors, but the aggressive doorhandle-to-doorhandle nature of touring car racing is extremely well-emulated. Real-life circuits are the focus here (there are 13, compared to Grid 2’s five, and most feature several routes), and Codemasters has reinserted practice periods and qualifying rounds. The default length for the races errs on the short side, but there’s an option to multiply race distances by up to five should you find yourself yearning for longer contests.

Open Wheel racing is not unlike Codemasters’ own F1 series, although it’s nowhere near as brutally unforgiving as the latter can be. Autosport may be Grid going back to its roots, but it still favours fun over unflinching accuracy.

The Tuner category is probably the weakest of the five. Drifting feels a bit more forgiving (and more fun) than it did in Grid 2 but the Time Trials here aren’t really that pulse-raising; they honestly just feel like a qualifying session for a race that never comes.

The AI makes mistakes, although sometimes they make the sames ones even after multiple race restarts.

Endurance is Autosport’s most confusing category. They look the part, but the default length of these races is just eight minutes. It’s strange because tyre wear, which is only a factor in the Endurance category, is scaled to the length of the race. You can bring a little logic to the tyre wear issue by manually increasing the length of your endurance races but that only serves to highlight Autosport’s most egregious sin: no pit stops. It’s a bizarre omission, and it’s one that quietly undermines a lot of what Autosport does right. Deciding whether pitting for fresh rubber during an enduro to salvage a race objective would’ve added an interesting layer of strategy; not being able to do so is nonsense, really.

It also makes some of what Codemasters does with its damage modelling a waste of energy. For instance, what’s the point of programming in punctures when I know I can’t change that tyre? If I’m out of Flashbacks (or I’ve deactivated them) am I really going to run the rest of the race on my rim? Nope. I’m just going to quit and restart the event.

We had pit stops on PSone. Just saying.

The Street category is where the Autosport picks up from Grid 2, with production cars of various levels of potency (from hot hatches to hypercars) racing on tight, largely walled city courses characterised by cramped and unconventional kinks and 90-degree corners. The tracks here are mostly repeats from Grid 2, like Dubai and Paris and such, but they’re not as overused in Autosport because street racing doesn’t dominate the gameplay as much as it does in Grid 2. Codemasters’ stingy course design philosophy – which relies on multiple routes through the same environment, with most of the routes sharing lengthy, overlapping segments with each other – is less of an issue in Autosport because it’s been bolstered with so many great real-world tracks.

Washington features various landmarks to race past, like The White House.

In a response to Grid 2 criticism, Codemasters has added not one, but two different cabin views to Autosport. The more closely-cropped one is somewhat passable but the traditional one is a fuzzy mess and lacks any working dials or mirrors. It’s a disappointing smear, because Autosport is a good-looking game for the most part. I love the little details, like the flies buzzing around your helmet while parked on the grid at Jarama under the belting Spanish sun, or the bugs assaulting your headlights when waiting for the green light in a night race. The car models, at least externally, are entirely satisfactory and the tracks beam with colour. There are quite a few details that don’t stand up to much inspection, however. Underneath damaged hoods engine detail is rudimentary at best, as are the crowds. I did like how the stands were almost empty during qualifying sessions but packed for races, though.

The blurry open wheeler steering wheels are the worst.

Things are mostly satisfactory in the audio stakes, with some nice ambient effects, but the exhaust notes could’ve had more bark. Purpose-built race cars are more deafening.

Like Grid 2, multiplayer is virtually a separate game in Autosport. Unlike Grid 2, however, Autosport’s broader types of racing and greater variety of tracks means there’s far more to keep us occupied. As opposed to the single-player, where you race for other teams in their cars, multiplayer in Autosport lets you build your own garage of cars. Your cars will be unique, with their own mileage, win/loss rate, XP level, and incident history. The visual customisation here is quite narrow, though, so don’t expect to be able to create any real-world replicas.

The racing itself was smooth and seamless during my online session with a mostly well-behaved group of racers. It supports up to 12 humans, but AI drivers can fill the empty slots if you choose. Autosport’s AI is actually quite good; they seem more aware of your actions than I expected and they’re pretty authentic opponents.

The Verdict

For the first time in years, Grid Autosport feels like a Codemasters racing game built to appeal to long-time Codemasters racing fans. Grid Autosport promised proper motor racing, and that’s exactly what it delivers (and plenty of it, to boot). It falls a bit short in the visual stakes compared to the hotter, new generation completion, but few developers get pack racing right like Grid Autosport does. The spirit of the classic TOCA games is finally back.

At the very least, maybe it’ll finally teach the rest of the world what a ute is.